freebsd stable - Jul 2006 - Which FreeBSD is the most stable for Dell PowerEdge 2850

Hi everyone.

I'm currently running the following:

Hardware: Dell PowerEdge 2850 rack mounted server, Dual 3.4 Ghz Xeon,  
5 Gb memory
Hard Drives: LSILogic PERC 4e/Di, configured as RAID 5, with 3 X 40  
Gb disks
OS: FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE-p6 for amd64

It's sole purpose is to be an SQL server, and that's about the only  
thing that's running on it, namely:

mysqld Ver 4.1.16 for portbld-freebsd5.4 on amd64 (FreeBSD port:  
mysql-server-4.1.16)

The server is rather heavily loaded, and 8 or 9 months ago, I had  
problems with it spontaneously "hard" rebooting irregularly every few
days to several weeks.  All the hardware tested out fine, but it  
acted as if someone just pulled the plug and then plugged it back in  
(looking through the log files showed everything working fine, and  
then suddenly the logs would start showing messages from the boot  
sequence).  Of course, the disks would then be scanned for errors,  
and sometimes the SQL databases needed repairs from the unexpected  
restart.  There weren't real power fluctuations involved - the  
machine was on a building-wide UPS, and several other machines in the  
same cabinet plugged into the same power source never had issues -  
and the PowerEdge itself has two power supplies.   I never was able  
to track down definitively what was causing the problem (especially  
since it was sporadic), but eventually found that by disabling  
hyperthreading, it never crashed again.  I don't know why, or even  
if, it fixed anything, but since it hasn't crashed since then,  
haven't wanted to touch it.

In any case, the server is used heavily all year except July, so this  
is my time of year to take things apart, update software, etc.  And  
so I'm wondering - what is the recommended version of FreeBSD I  
should be running if stability is of the utmost importance?  Should I  
migrate to the 6.x stream?  Is it relatively solid?  Or should I stay  
with 5.4 for now?  I've seen some messages posted periodically from  
various people running into problems, but am wondering if it's just  
relatively isolated incidents or if there are fairly common problems  
with stability.  I could keep running what I'm running now, but since  
this is the month to update things that are appropriate to update, I  
thought I'd ask.  I don't want to stay with the 5.4 release  
indefinitely if the cessation of security patches loom on the  
horizon.  Plus, if 6.x is stable with hyperthreading, I'd like to  
turn it back on.  I heard about the information disclosure  
vulnerability on hyperthreaded CPUs, but I'm under the impression  
that it can only be exploited by other local users.  I'm the only  
user on that machine, so if so, that vulnerability shouldn't affect  
me, and I'd like to squeak out every bit of performance possible.

I'll probably be upgrading to MySQL 5.0 along the way too, unless  
anyone has any horror stories to share there :-)

Thanks for any help or advice you can give!

Dan
--
Syzygy Research & Technology
Box 83, Legal, AB  T0G 1L0 Canada
Phone: 780-961-2213

Hi Dan,
   It's usually best to go with the current production release. As 
such, I would recommend going with the latest release of FreeBSD 6. 
FreeBSD 5 is now a legacy release, so support for it will probably 
start to fall off sooner rather than later. Also, as I understand it, 
version 5 was plagued with various problems that are not present in 6. 
Finally mySQL runs very well on FreeBSD 6, due to the new filesystem 
and updated threading libraries.

-Jim Keller
http://www.contexthosting.net

Quoting Dan Charrois <dan@syz.com>:
> Hi everyone.
>
> I'm currently running the following:
>
> Hardware: Dell PowerEdge 2850 rack mounted server, Dual 3.4 Ghz Xeon, 
>  5 Gb memory
> Hard Drives: LSILogic PERC 4e/Di, configured as RAID 5, with 3 X 40  Gb
disks
> OS: FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE-p6 for amd64
>
> It's sole purpose is to be an SQL server, and that's about the only
> thing that's running on it, namely:
>
> mysqld Ver 4.1.16 for portbld-freebsd5.4 on amd64 (FreeBSD port:  
> mysql-server-4.1.16)
>
> The server is rather heavily loaded, and 8 or 9 months ago, I had  
> problems with it spontaneously "hard" rebooting irregularly every
few
>  days to several weeks.  All the hardware tested out fine, but it  
> acted as if someone just pulled the plug and then plugged it back in  
> (looking through the log files showed everything working fine, and  
> then suddenly the logs would start showing messages from the boot  
> sequence).  Of course, the disks would then be scanned for errors,  
> and sometimes the SQL databases needed repairs from the unexpected  
> restart.  There weren't real power fluctuations involved - the  
> machine was on a building-wide UPS, and several other machines in the 
>  same cabinet plugged into the same power source never had issues -  
> and the PowerEdge itself has two power supplies.   I never was able  
> to track down definitively what was causing the problem (especially  
> since it was sporadic), but eventually found that by disabling  
> hyperthreading, it never crashed again.  I don't know why, or even  
> if, it fixed anything, but since it hasn't crashed since then,  
> haven't wanted to touch it.
>
> In any case, the server is used heavily all year except July, so this 
>  is my time of year to take things apart, update software, etc.  And  
> so I'm wondering - what is the recommended version of FreeBSD I  
> should be running if stability is of the utmost importance?  Should I 
>  migrate to the 6.x stream?  Is it relatively solid?  Or should I 
> stay  with 5.4 for now?  I've seen some messages posted periodically 
> from  various people running into problems, but am wondering if it's 
> just  relatively isolated incidents or if there are fairly common 
> problems  with stability.  I could keep running what I'm running now, 
> but since  this is the month to update things that are appropriate to 
> update, I  thought I'd ask.  I don't want to stay with the 5.4 
> release  indefinitely if the cessation of security patches loom on 
> the  horizon.  Plus, if 6.x is stable with hyperthreading, I'd like 
> to  turn it back on.  I heard about the information disclosure  
> vulnerability on hyperthreaded CPUs, but I'm under the impression  
> that it can only be exploited by other local users.  I'm the only  
> user on that machine, so if so, that vulnerability shouldn't affect  
> me, and I'd like to squeak out every bit of performance possible.
>
> I'll probably be upgrading to MySQL 5.0 along the way too, unless  
> anyone has any horror stories to share there :-)
>
> Thanks for any help or advice you can give!
>
> Dan
> --
> Syzygy Research & Technology
> Box 83, Legal, AB  T0G 1L0 Canada
> Phone: 780-961-2213
>
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>

On Jun 30, 2006, at 8:08 PM, Dan Charrois wrote:
> In any case, the server is used heavily all year except July, so  
> this is my time of year to take things apart, update software,  
> etc.  And so I'm wondering - what is the recommended version of  
> FreeBSD I should be running if stability is of the utmost  
> importance?  Should I migrate to the 6.x stream?  Is it relatively  
> solid?  Or should I stay with 5.4 for now?  I've seen some messages  
> posted periodically from various people running into problems,
I don't have any 2850's but the 1850 I have has been running 6.0  
since the BETA1, and last night just upgraded it to 6.1.  No issues.   
The PERC 4e/Si card is phenominally fast on this system (running 2  
disk RAID1).  I'd recommend you to run 6.1 as it is stable on all of  
my Dell systems that run it (and I'm migrating the older FreeBSD  
boxes to 6.1 as time permits).

If you already have > 1 CPU, you might as well leave hyperthreading  
off.  There are cases where it degenerates performance rather than  
enhance it.

As for mysql version, "no comment" :-)

> I don't have any 2850's but the 1850 I have has been running 6.0
> since the BETA1, and last night just upgraded it to 6.1.  No issues.
> The PERC 4e/Si card is phenominally fast on this system (running 2
> disk RAID1).  I'd recommend you to run 6.1 as it is stable on all of
> my Dell systems that run it (and I'm migrating the older FreeBSD
> boxes to 6.1 as time permits).
>
> If you already have > 1 CPU, you might as well leave hyperthreading
> off.  There are cases where it degenerates performance rather than
> enhance it.
>
> As for mysql version, "no comment" :-)
Thanks for the reply!  I'm in the process of upgrading the 2850 to  
6.1 now, and it seems to have gone well so far.  Time will tell in  
the long term whether the stability is what I'm hoping for, but at  
least it does seem to be up and running okay so far.

As for hyperthreading, I did some benchmarking back with FreeBSD 5.4  
using the actual SQL databases I'm serving on the machine and loading  
the server with lots of simultaneous queries from remote machines  
similar to those which will be used in production.  Back then, there  
was about a 10% increase in performance.  I'll run the same tests  
again before putting the machine in production again to see if  
anything changed.

10% isn't much, but every bit helps, if hyperthreading doesn't cause  
the machine to become unstable otherwise.

Thanks again!

Dan
--
Syzygy Research & Technology
Box 83, Legal, AB  T0G 1L0 Canada
Phone: 780-961-2213